Courage and Invisible Scars
by intriKate
Summary: After returning to England from Narnia, Peter wonders if he has lost everything- including himself. Post LWW, pre-Prince Caspian. Bookverse.


Before his eyes even opened, Peter was reaching for his sword when he heard the sound of the unfamiliar footsteps. This would have been stunningly effective in dealing with an intruder, had the sword been brought back to Finchley, and if Peter had still weighed a good fifteen stone. He opened his eyes, memory catching up with the habits of a king who has seen many wars.

Memory identified the creaking wood floors in the hall, where instinct would have listened for the brush of paws on the stone floors of Cair Paravel. Peter glanced at the clock by his bed. Edmund, in the other bed, was still sleeping soundly. It was too early yet for Mother and Father to be back from the movie and Father's club, where they had said they would go for supper after. Mother would have poked her head in to make sure they were asleep. Peter's feeling of unease grew.

He slipped from bed, towards the door, and eased through it, just in time to see a silhouette against the street-facing window. A man was outside the girls' bedroom door; Peter felt something clench, deep below his stomach. This man didn't belong so close to his sisters, whose even, rhythmic breathing he could hear from where he stood. But the interloper turned to the hall closet instead, where Mrs. Pevensie kept her precious fur coat. Peter saw its bulky shape as it was carelessly pulled out. Now was the time to make a move, he knew. While his opponent was distracted, now was time.

Peter hesitated. The burglar didn't appear to be a large man; certainly no match for the High King of Narnia.

But Peter Pevensie was just a boy, here, in a body that often didn't seem his. Everything he picked up was heavier than it ought to be, and the things he reached for on high shelves were mysteriously out of reach. And the scrawny man placing his hand on Susan and Lucy's doorknob was still bigger than Peter.

Before Peter had to decide whether or not to charge at the man anyway, he released the doorknob and turned away, light from the street lamp slivering past him to illuminate a family picture on the wall, and to reflect off a knife, blade tucked into an ill-fitting case on the man's belt. Peter's heart began to pound at the familiarity of it all; suddenly, he wanted to slump against the wall, or sit down. He felt as if he were in two places at once: here, in a hallway in Finchley, and-

_-only the half moon shines through his bedroom window at Cair Paravel but it is more than enough to see the assassin coming through it, as Peter lays on his pillow, eyes almost shut. The moon illuminates a partially-exposed knife and Peter knows his sword is nowhere near-_

-the burglar turned, and in Peter's wild perception he couldn't tell if the man was turning toward him, or away.

_But there was a sword on the other side of the room, he knows, even if he doesn't know why it would be there, but it is and he runs to grab it, hoping desperately that he can before the assassin reaches him. The footsteps come closer and, adrenaline lending him strength, he grabs and swings a sword heavier than he should be able to lift. Its broad sweep becomes unstoppable, but doesn't defend him against the assassin's knife, slashing easily across his chest before dropping to the ground, with the assassin's body. He looks down to see blood running through his nightshirt, streaming down in sheets. _

The burglar walks away, without ever seeing Peter standing there.

_Lucy and her cordial were already three days away on a diplomatic mission, so Susan stitches up the wound herself, looking pale but determined as the needle passes back and forth, the flesh puckering around the thread. Peter braces himself against the pain as best as he can, and feels good about it: Aslan did not choose a frightened boy for a leader, but a warrior. _

He could have died.

The thought that should have hit him then, all those years and just a moment before, rushed upon him with unexpected force. It was as if that knife is coming toward him, again and again, even though he knew he was standing in his own hallway. The front door clicked as it shut, but Peter didn't do anything but slouch against the wall, thinking that he could have died there in Narnia. No one would ever have known; his parents would never know why he never came back from the Professor's house. Perhaps he never would have existed in this world at all.

Peter willed his heart to stop pounding; slowly, gradually, it did. His back to the wall, he slid down to sit on the floor. He was a king of Narnia, then and always. That's what Aslan had said.

He was a king who had just let a thief walk off with one of his mother's most cherished possessions. And Aslan wasn't here, had never been here. Though Peter knew what he would find, having already discovered his hard adult body turned back to the spindly form of a boy, his hand crept up his ribcage, under his nightshirt, to feel the smooth scar there, the puckered edges of skin that had never gone away. His thumb rubbed along where he knew it to be, and felt only the soft texture of goosepimply skin, the tiny nub of a nipple, and the even spacing of rib bones.

His wound had completely healed, but this felt nothing like healing. It was only destruction: the destruction of his past, the destruction of the stories in his scars, of all those million assurances that he was something other than simply scared, and small, and alone.

The sobs burst from him, then: soundless, long gasps that left him shaking and clapping a hand over his mouth before he woke anyone.

It was _all_ gone. Nothing but memories going fuzzy like dreams. Nothing of Narnia left; not his crown, or his sword, or Aslan, or even himself.

Did Aslan know it was going to be like this, such a shock? Where every day was a test in remembering a country he left as a child, and his head filled with knowledge useless to him and everyone around him? Little boys don't need to know how to rule empires or hunt magic stags. At those times when he slipped into an old way of speech, and his father looked at him strangely, did Aslan ever think to tell him how lonely that would be?

Why did Aslan let them stay and grow up if he knew how they'd fall back into their own world, and how hard the landing would be? England had slipped from their minds like a dream, allowing them to believe they would live there in Narnia forever, if they thought about it at all.

One would think anyone who was a bridge between worlds would be pulled equally in both directions. But maybe it was that his moorings had fallen loose on one side, and that was why it always felt as if he was just falling through life.

Some king he was, curled miserably on a cold hallway floor in the dark. The scar and its story no longer existed; maybe his royal status didn't exist, either. If Aslan had been there, maybe he would remind Peter of his identity. But maybe Aslan was just as real as his scar.

Door hinges creaked somewhere to his right. "Peter?" said Susan, above him. He swiped a sleeve over his face; not that he was ashamed of tears, but to cry over being only a boy seemed somehow unfair. Susan sat down beside him. "What's wrong, Peter?" she demanded gently, and he sat stiffly, not trusting himself to speak. When she wrapped an arm around his shoulder, though, he turned to her, pressing his cheek into her arm.

"A thief," he choked out. "In the house. I couldn't stop him."

He felt Susan tense. "Where?"

"He's gone." Peter bowed his head. "With Mother's fur coat."

Susan was silent a moment. "Mother would rather you were safe than have her coat, you know that."

"But-" He swallowed. "I could have stopped him. Back when- you know."

Peter thought he could hear the silent echoes of _but we're not like that anymore_ between them, but Susan was too graceful to say it, he knew. "I know," she said quietly. "You could have."

"I didn't even try." He looked up at her. "Su, you remember when I got that scar on my chest?"

She made a face. "And I had to put in the stitches? I don't think I'll ever forget."

"It isn't there anymore. It's like I made it all up."

"No!" The word burst forth from Susan in a sharp whisper. "You _didn't_, Peter, you didn't make it up. Because if it was all a game, all imaginary, it's _all_ of us that made it. Maybe you don't know how to fight without your sword, but I can't walk by a mirror without looking to see if there's _anything_ there of what I used to be. If any of Queen Susan remains."

Peter reached over and tugged on one of her messy braids. "All of Queen Susan remains. I always see you as beautiful as you were that morning we set out to hunt the stag."

"I'm not, though."

"Maybe not in the mirror. But it's still all I can see of you."

"If my beauty is still there, then so is your scar," she replied, thumping him gently on the chest. Peter didn't answer. She sighed. "You're the one who charged ahead when we saw the lamppost, Peter. I was the one who wanted to go back. And that… that hunger to do great things, that is always who you are. I wanted to be safe, because that's how I am, but I wanted to be with you and Edmund and Lucy more… which is why we're all here, I suppose. So if I am still the woman I was then _despite_ turning on my nature to come here, then you must be at least the man you were there, scars and all. Because that man led us back to England."

"I'm sorry, Su."

"Don't be," she said briskly, taking a look at his face. "The Professor said we'd get back, sometime. Maybe you'll be the one to find the way."

"You think?"

"One never knows." She stood. "Time for bed, I think. We'll tell Mother about the coat in the morning."

Peter stood too, and briefly embraced his sister. "G'night, Su."

She went back into her room, and he could hear the creak of her bed as she settled into it. He slowly walked into his own room, pausing before the wardrobe he and Edmund shared. It had a mirror on the front. He pulled up his nightshirt, looked at his chest, so much narrower than he was accustomed to seeing it. But in the faint moonlight coming through the window, doing little more than casting darker shadows in the room, he saw it there- the scar. A strip of whiter flesh, smooth and raised. He turned slightly, and it was gone; turned back, and he could almost see it again.

Perhaps he hadn't left everything behind.


End file.
